You vs. The Short Bus

It was my intention to post this rant yesterday, but lately I have been unable to dump concept/thought to keyboard. In my head I know what is it I want to say, but somehow the translation/context comes out completely different as I read over my entry.

Anyway, back to yesterday. During the usual morning jaunt to school the transmission blew in my car leaving me stranded on the highway. I suppose I could have shook clenched fists at the sky and screamed “Why O why have you forsaken me Lord?” but I saw the answer sprawled on the bumper sticker of some yuppie’s Lexus – All God’s Blessings Are For John Wayne. Apparently, I forgot to walk the dogma again…

Ryan would say I was just handed a ticket on the short bus, but after my knee-jerk reaction of getting pissed, all I could do was laugh. There was nothing at that moment I could do to improve my condition except call for a tow truck. My class wasn’t going to be put on hold because I wasn’t there, my assignments would still be due regardless of my attendance and I had no control whether the instructor would show any compassion for my circumstances. Before I got caught up thinking “How the hell will I get to work tomorrow?” I took a moment to realize the car dying in Dallas was a helluva lot better than the car dying over the weekend while Michelle & I were in Corpus Christi. Better yet, I was happy the rain had just stopped as I was leaving my apartment. Sometimes happiness comes in the finest of degrees and perception is reality.

My experience yesterday doesn’t make me any different or any more the same as the next person. Everybody has suffered through a bad day, it’s just some of us get all of ours lumped together in succession. I’ve been beat up, stepped on, turned down, laughed at, pissed on, stabbed, shot at, rejected, loved less, loved no more, passed over, come in second, chosen last and never measured up. I’ve survived bankruptcy, lasik surgery, ex-girlfriends, one night stands, fraternities, business ventures, lawsuits, identity theft and any number of bad decisions which I take full responsibility for and I don’t regret the experiences.

I won’t deny there are moments when I feel singled out by all the crap that I’m experiencing. Random badness soon weaves itself into a pattern and it’s only natural to attempt some form of rationalization. Some folks get by believing everything happens for a reason, others simply roll with life’s challenges. Personally, I’m just stubborn and I’m here before you today by sheer force of will. I refuse to play the victim when it comes to circumstance and while those close to me will attest I exaggerate problems or bitch loud when I pitch a fit, nobody can deny that through it all I manage to get things done. And that’s all I can suggest for anybody else – define your experiences, don’t let them define you.

Alrighty, that’s about all I can type during my lunch break. Will be headed to class after I get out of work and I’m still figuring out how the website will mix into all this. Nip/Tuck recap is still in the works, if I can post it from school later I will do so.

As for your Bad Day–whenever I have a crappy day, I think about a day about 4 years ago when I heard 2 brief stories on the radio, back to back, which I found particularly relevent.

The first was a small news item mentioning that Bill Gates’ personal net worth (on paper) currently stood at a whopping $70 BILLION (this was based on MSFT’s stock price being at an all-time high, prior to the dot-com collapse…he’s probably down to a mere $30-40 billion today, poor thing).

This was immediately followed up by a story about the ongoing drought in Rwanda, which had gotten so bad that thousands of locals had resorted to having to suck the moisture out of tree bark just to keep from dying from dehydration.

Any time I’m having a bad day, I think of these two stories, take a good look at my own position in the universe at the moment (smack-dab in between the two extremes), and feel relatively good about how things are going.